ROBERT MUELLER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “One is the most cacophonous man in America, the other is the most silent. And as they head for a seemingly inevitable clash, both are living out the creeds that made them who they are. President Donald Trump and Robert Mueller may be contemporaries but are temperamental opposites, divided most deeply by their respective contempt and reverence for the institutions of US government. Right now, the President is doing his best to tear down the special counsel in the apparent belief that if he doesn’t, Mueller will eventually do the same to him. On Tuesday alone, Trump, with no evidence, accused Mueller of meddling in the midterm elections, of packing his team with Democratic partisans and of presiding over a’rigged’ ‘witch-hunt’ that put ‘spies’ inside his 2016 campaign. The raging, conspiratorial attacks on Twitter escalated a strategy orchestrated by Trump and polemicist allies in conservative media to discredit Mueller’s eventual findings, to taint his probe as a Democratic plot and to unite Republican voters behind the President to secure his hold on office…But the taciturn special counsel never fights back. As he has done throughout his long career as a prosecutor, Mueller has put his head down, avoided the spotlight, and let his richly detailed indictments — of 19 people and three companies — do the talking. And he’s nowhere near finished yet.”
-Stephen Collinson, “Polar opposites Trump and Mueller barrel toward a showdown,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, May 30, 2018 2:33 am